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<img loading="lazy" src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources/juan-flavier-1994-m.webp" alt="Juan M. Flavier" />
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(Senator Juan Flavier (center) in 1994 )
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He spend his youth in the Mountain Province where his father, a labor organizer, was employed as a mechanic at the Balatoc Mining Company. He excelled in school, and by his talent and determination, and his mother's enterprise, she sold used clothing to help pay for his education, he achieved his dream of becoming a doctor, receiving his degree in Medicine from the University of the Philippines in 1960. 
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After a year of teaching, and much to his mother's dismay, he left a comfortable academic and medical career to join the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM), an organization dedicated to serving the common folks through education, training and empowerment.  In April 1961 Flavier became, as he likes to say, <i>"a doctor to the barrios"</i>.
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In the years that followed, working with PRRM and the newly formed International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), Flavier combined medical service to the villages with the design and supervision of community health projects. He became chief of PRRM's Division of Health and in 1967 its acting president. In that year he was recognized as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines. 
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In 1969 he earned a Masters Degree in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University and upon returning from the United States, assumed the vice presidency of IIRR. In 1978 the Board of Trustees of the IIRR selected Flavier to succeed Y.C. James Yen, who was retiring from the presidency at the age of 85. 
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June 23, 1935: Juan Flavier was born in the slums of Manila